INT J CURR SCI 2016, 19(4): E 52-61 RESEARCH ARTICLE
ISSN 2250-1770
Effect of Different Salinity Levels on Maize (Zea mays L.) Genotypes During Germination Diriba Shankoa*, Itefa Degefab, Bula kerec and Gebayo Hayetod a,b c,Biology
Department, College of Natural and Computational Sciences (CNCS), Bule Hora University (BHU), P.O. Box: 144, Bule Hora, Oromia, Ethiopia dGraduate
student at Bule Hora University, Biology Department
*Corresponding author:
[email protected] Abstract Salinity is main threats to world food security, to ensure future food needs, production of salt tolerant crop varieties are necessary. This study was going to screen out the salt tolerant maize genotypes under salt stress condition. An experiment was performed as factorial under Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with three replications. The experimental treatments were contained four NaCl salinity levels (0, 80, 160 and 240 mM) and nine maize genotypes (61006, Mal-1, Mal.hybrid, 215065, MHQ, 207346, 227235, M-130 and 61036) were used in this experiment. Data was analyzed using SAS (version 16.0) statistical software and means were analyzed by least significance difference (LSD). Germination percentage (GP), Germination rate (GR), final germination percentage (FGP), radicle length (RL), plumule length (RL) and seed vigour (SV) were measured. The ANOVA for treatments, genotypes and their interaction was found to be highly significant (p